


My Shangri-La

by cher



Category: Lost Boys (movie)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2007, recipient:Jess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-21
Updated: 2010-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:27:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/pseuds/cher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael, after the blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Shangri-La

Michael remembers the blood in flashes, and he's kept the sunglasses habit because when he thinks of David he scares people. David and his feral beauty, hating him and loving him and wanting to fight, fuck, _fly_. David taught him to fly.

David chose him for eternity, and that had to mean something. It had meant something in the years after Santa Carla, haunted by blond hair and leather wherever he went. The blood had left him in a horrible rush when Max died, a sick, sudden feeling of emptiness, awful and welcome, like the weakness after orgasm or too much adrenaline. The need was gone, but the wildness he never lost.

He kept the earring and some nights didn't go home at all; his body had learned from the blood and he couldn't sleep without the wind on the bluff. He took the bike and rode it through whatever weather he could find and pretended he wasn't trying to fly. He went sometimes to the sunken hotel and pretended he wasn't looking for David, who wasn't dead, couldn't have been dead because even though skewering that motherfucker through the chest had felt like - God, like fucking *coming* - and  
seeing him fade into youth, hanging there, had felt like dying, when they got the lights back on David was gone.

Star ran as soon as she knew it, gone back to wherever she'd come from and taken Laddie with her. Maybe the wildness had her too - Michael didn't know, couldn't care. She'd left him and she was the last one who might have understood what it was to fly. Might have understood what it was to love David, hate David.

Santa Carla couldn't hold him and Lucy couldn't either, not after his forth or his seventh or his fifteenth fight on the Boardwalk, coming home bruised and smiling and looking, Sam hissed at him, like a fucking freak.

In his quieter moments he was sorry for it, sorry for his mother's defeated guilt and Sam's angry eyes. But he couldn't unlearn what David and the blood had shown him, and he couldn't love the old Michael who hadn't known how sweet it could be to own the night.

So he rode the carnival rides and learned which clubs to go to, the ones where he could find the right kind of girl, the right kind of guy. Sam stopped asking about the bruises and Michael was careful about wearing long sleeves, high necks, saving Lucy's eyes.

Then one night he stepped onto the Boardwalk and the wind tasted the same as it had back then, and he could almost hear his name in it, _Michael, Michael, be one of us, Michael_. It must have been a year at least, and he ached to fly. He snarled at a girl putting her hand on his arm, shouldered her aside and found his bike, the closest thing to what he needed. Speed, distance, and maybe later he'd run hard and exhaust himself. Maybe he could sleep.

He screamed out of town with the carnival lights in his eyes and David's voice in his ears, the music fading behind him. He didn't quite know he was leaving until he'd done it, hit the highway and kept on riding. He called Sam from a gas station payphone in the middle of nowhere, CA, the next day, told him he'd be gone for awhile and to tell Mom and Grandpa he loved them and would be back. Sam yelled at him, threatened him with the Frogs and eternal shunning and a life of prostitution in LA, and in the end made him promise to call every day.

Michael liked being out on the road. It settled him, exhilarated him, made it less necessary to fight before he could sleep. He worked bars for money, pouring drinks, breaking up fights, sometimes starting them and being thrown out himself. He called Sam a few times a week; short, tense exchanges during which Sam came up with new and louder reasons why he should come home, right the fuck now, you bastard. Michael kept calling anyway, because Sam was his brother and even before the blood he'd known what that meant.

He drifted around the smaller coastal towns, toyed with checking out Mexico, headed to San Jose instead. He hit San Francisco for a few weeks, liked the city and its noise, bars, clubs. Liked how easy it was to find someone to fuck, which was better than a fight but not as good as both together.

Two months, and that started to seem like too long away from Sam, so he rode back into Santa Carla, endured Grandpa's weirdo philosophising, Lucy's tears, Sam's tirades. The first night, he stayed up talking with Sam, painting pictures of San Jose's shiny, sterile buildings, San Francisco's back room bars and bridges. The way small towns in the middle of nowhere could have the most interesting people and the best beer he'd ever tasted. Michael felt used up by morning, like he hadn't spoken a word in the months he'd been away and now had spent all the banked up sentences in one long rush. Maybe he'd been remembering things for Sam, because he didn't think he'd have remembered that one Castro club with the trendy, trendy kids for himself.

The next night he went to the sunken hotel; couldn't have kept away if he'd chained himself to his bike. He thought he caught the barest hint of movement, air disturbed as if someone had made a quick exit, but when he ran into the back of the cave he found nothing. Cursing himself for a fool, he sat on the edge of the fountain and wondered what he wanted anyway. If he found David they'd kill each other all over again, and he'd like that, like fighting someone he really wanted to beat for once.  
Then maybe if David won he wouldn't want to kill Michael. Maybe he'd still want a brother. Maybe Michael already had a brother and he'd better stop this, go home and see Lucy.

He lasted a week before he was gone again, off down into Mexico to see what he could find. There were less phones and less fucks, too, until he'd picked up enough Spanish to get by. The tequila was incredible and the bars something else. He had to be careful here, who he picked to fight with, and the next time he came home to Sam he had a few new scars to hide. It had been six months this time, and yet Sam yelled less, listened more, was maybe, Michael thought, getting to like the stories of the road. Michael liked having someone to remember for, wouldn't notice half so much if not to tell Sam about it later.

He explored Arizona, stayed clear of Phoenix, tried LA and couldn't decide if he loved it or hated it. Vegas fascinated him for a few months, then abruptly lost is charm when he turned to say something to Sam, to David, and - of course, of course - neither were there.

It had been years by then, and Michael still went to the hotel every time he hit Santa Carla. The hotel didn't smell like the pack anymore; just dust and rot. No one but him came there now, but he couldn't stay away.

It got lonely on the road sometimes, and Sam was looking more and more restless, so Michael went back to San Francisco where the money was okay and the jobs were thick on the ground, and worked his ass off for a few months. This time when he blew into town he was driving a pickup with his bike in the tray, and a bike for Sam as well.

Lucy cried and pleaded, but Sam had been gone since Michael had come back from Mexico, and they all knew it. Michael sold the pickup, spent a week teaching Sam to ride the bike, and then they were gone, first to San Jose and then back to San Francisco, where Michael wanted to show Sam the bars and clubs of the Castro.

It was glorious, then, for a few years, the wildness settled by Sam's presence and the occasional fight, back room fuck in a club. Michael needed that less often now, because having a brother was the most essential of the things the wildness liked.

Michael still heard David's voice now and again, still woke sweating from dreams of David's naked chest against his back, dreams of David's feral, dying, not-dying eyes. He tried to forget, and tried to pretend Sam didn't know, that Sam hadn't heard him wake a hundred times with David's name on his lips.

They went back to Santa Carla every so often, once for Grandpa's funeral, and more often after that to see Lucy. Michael still liked to spend his nights alone on the Boardwalk, lights in his eyes and riding the rollercoaster to feel like he could fly.

One night like that, he heard the creak of leather behind him the way he did sometimes, though he'd long since stopped turning; no one would be there. He heard his name, but he heard his name in that voice so often. He felt a hand on his arm, and that was new. He whirled and wondered if he'd drunk too much, knew he hadn't drunk near enough to see David so clearly here.

In the end it was easy, what he wanted. In the end, the blood and the wildness weren't that different, and taking Sam away on the bike wasn't that different from showing him this other kind of freedom.

Brothers looked out for each other.

 


End file.
